University of Virginia Library

LETTER XLVI.

This letter's date shows you that I am once more
an inmate of the charming abode from which I have so
frequently written you. My last was dated at New
Orleans, where we had been to purchase the hundred
little elegancies for Isabel's bridal, which having done to
all our satisfactions, we returned home on Tuesday last.
I see by one of your papers that I have been so distinguished
as to find a critic.

Dear me! I had no idea, not the remotest, that any
thing coming from my pen could be worthy of the notice
of any other pen, especially such a graceful one as that
of your New Orleans correspondent. If I use “Needles,”
her pens are pointed with gold, and sharpened with
diamond dust. Present to her my most gracious compliments,
and say to her that she is right in supposing I
had made a mistake in giving to one railroad terminus
some descriptive sentences which really belonged to the
other! I thank her for the correction and especially for
making it so pleasantly. But who could be expected to
have their heads perfectly clear, Mr. —, (I ask you,
who are a married man, and ought to know about such
matters,) when they were shopping with a bride-elect,

attended by a handsome young man, and half in love with
him myself?

I do not mean Isabel's affiancé Isidore, but a friend
of his, who escorted us; for Isidore is too diffident to go
a-shopping with Bel, on such an occasion. Now, having
told you the secret, Mr. —, you are not surprised. I
feel confident that my head was a little giddy, and that
I mistook my notes about one railway at one end of the
city, jotted down when I came from a day's trip to Pass
Christian for those made for the other railway at the
other end; and I trust that this explanation will make
me friends with your correspondent. And talking of
such contributors to your columns, pray who is “Nicolene?”
She writes with taste to be sure, and does me
great honor, in her graceful humility, to furnish such
exquisitely woven threads for my “Needles.” But I do
her injustice to call them thread—they are the finest
silken floss of the richest and most brilliant tints. How
intimately one can know an unknown one by means of
the magic press! This “Nicolene” and I are already
friends, stitched as closely together as twin-sisters, by
means of our “Thread and Needle.” Shall we ever
meet in this green world under the sunny blue sky, hand
in hand, and friendly eye looking into friendly eye? or
if not, and we cross one another's bright path in celestial
fields, shall we know who one another is; and shall we
then be to the other as the “thread” to the “needle:”
two but one in aim, and in all things?

Perhaps, too, I have many friends—many kindred
spirits, who have become acquainted with me through
my “Needles.” I sometimes love to fancy myself visiting,
incognita, some of the firesides where they are read,

and where I am loved through them;[1] and to imagine
the dear welcome I should receive from smiling eyes and
pressing hands, when I told them who I was. Thus, my
dear sir, my pen has become to me the key to open many
hearts, who think and speak of me, as if they had seen
and talked with me face to face. They will continue to
be my friends, forever, and I to be theirs; so that I have
two sets of friends in the world; those whom I have seen,
and whose voices are familiar to my ear; and those
whose forms, whose faces, whose voices, whose names,
whose homes on earth, are all unknown to me! To them
I send love and greeting. To them I send wishes of
happiness and heaven; for them my prayers ascend; towards
them my pleasantest thoughts wander, when in
the still twilight I give them free wing over the shadowy,
half-star-lit world.

In this letter, dear Mr. —, I meant to have given
you a description of the great preparations which are
making for Isabel's bridal, which takes place on Thursday
morning next; but I have not time now, everybody
is hurrying everybody so; for one comes and urges me
to lay down my pen, and entwine a wreath of flowers for
some statuette; or another runs and asks me my opinion
of such an ornament for the chandeliers; Isabel sends
the pretty golden skinned slave, Emma, to ask me if she
ought to wear any rings at all during the ceremony, and
which, one or ones? and then my taste is in demand for
the best mode of dressing the chancel of the little gothic
chapel, where the ceremony is to take place; and what
with trying to keep Isidore within proper decorum, considering—the

he is soon to become a grave husband, and showing
ing Aunt Chloe how to frost cake “Bosting-way,” as
she calls it, I have enough to do; so good bye for this
day, good Mr. —. In a day or two you shall have
full particulars of the wedding.